


The Storm in Your Eyes

by Lindzzz



Series: Things That- [2]
Category: Guardians of Childhood - William Joyce, Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Book/Movie Fusion, Body Horror, Daddy's little girl, Gen, OC, Sci-Fi Elements, Seraphina backstory, companion fic, things that were
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-17
Updated: 2013-12-01
Packaged: 2017-12-12 02:39:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 8,010
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/806208
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lindzzz/pseuds/Lindzzz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She has her father's temper.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Woke up this morning and had Seraphina feelings whoops.
> 
> Sehstor Bunnymund has been briefly mentioned a few times in Things That Were. Main thing to know is that in this verse he was second in command to Kozmotis and unofficially took over caring for Seraphina after Koz was sent to be the guard.

She has her father’s temper.   
  
It took a while for her to see it, he was always so calm. Almost her entire life, she had seen him as a steady rock while her rage tossed her like a rag.

It isn’t until she’s older that she starts seeing the anger that shakes her in him as well. But while her temper is a sudden and blazing fire, his is a carefully aimed blast. She sees it when he narrows his eyes and makes a whole room fall silent, when he makes a single word as deadly as his scythe.

“It’s a weapon,” he had told her.  ”But it’s a wild one, you have to watch it very carefully and make sure that you’re the one who controls it, or it will control you.”

Seraphina hung on every word, but didn’t really understand at the time.

She does now.

There are times, when people will come to her and sing praises to her hero of a father, that she wants to scream and tear at them until they BEG her to stop.

“Your great and noble hero!”  She wants to shriek, “the one you all loved so much that you sent him to hell!”

Instead she smiles, thanks them so politely and coolly while she lets the rage burn through her words.  She learns not to bottle her anger, but to refine it. It makes her smile sharp as a blade and blazes through her eyes.  
  
“There’s a storm in your eyes, luv.”  Uncle Sehstor would tell her, whispering it as she smiles through the functions and social bullshit.  
  
The first time she silenced a group with just a look she almost ruined the moment by laughing. She was so glad that Sehstor was there to see it.

“You’re growing up into a right terrifying bitch.” He’d told her afterwards. She’d thrown her head back and laughed, taking it for the compliment that it was. Sehstor had grinned at her and then sobered, his voice softening into a quiet murmur meant only for the two of them.

“Your dad would be proud.”

Sera hears that a lot, but she never gives Sehstor the same look that she gives the others.  From Sehstor it means something, she knows that he only says it when it’s absolutely true.  
  
—————————-  
  
The anger gives her focus. She can block out everything else and dive into her tasks with a fierce determination. She finds passion in Terraformation. Feeling a world come to life under her hands, blending magic and science and pure wildness together into something new and amazing.  
  
It’s control, and she knows herself well enough to know that perhaps it is having complete control over an entire ecosystem that draws her to it.  Control was something that flew away on a ship bound for a doomed prison.

Everyone wants to be her friend at first, the daughter of the great General Pitchiner. She smiles and simmers at them until they leave on their own, leave her to her studies.  
  
Uncle Sehstor tries to convince her to talk to people more, to reach out more. But it’s a half-hearted try at best. He is just as angry about what the empire has done as she is.  
  
She has entire planets speaking to her, she has plants and atmospheres and the rain and light to direct. When she develops a new way to directly plug into the ecosystem, a way to link a Terraformers mind and will to the web of life they create, Uncle Sehstor is there to see her present it.  
  
He grins wide at her, his muzzle graying but he’s just as full of fight as ever.  From what she’d heard, he fought damn hard to make sure he was planetside for this.  Warm, brown paws cover her hands and he leans in to whisper in her ear.

“He’d be damn proud of you, girl.”  
  
——————————

Sehstor means it, and she’s sure the Tsar and Tsarina do as well, but she refuses to hear it from them. She can’t ignore them like she wants to, she can’t yell and tell them where they can shove their gratitude.

They honor him and throw feasts in his name. They give speeches that bring tears to the eyes of all that hear them.

They talk about him like he’s  _dead._  
  
Of course they throw a banquet to honor her invention. She’s the head Terraformer for the empire. The Royal Terraformer. She is not allowed to simply make new discoveries quietly.   
  
And, of course, the party conversation winds back to her father.  
  
 _He was such a determined soul as well._  
  
 _Oh you look just like he did._  
  
 _He would be proud dear._  
  
 _He was so good, and noble, and brave, and he sacrificed so much for you dear, aren’t you grateful?_  
  
People begin to raise toasts; to her, to the Tsar and Tsarina, to the memory of The Great General Pitchiner.  
  
To the memory.  
  
“I would like to raise a toast as well.” She says with a smile.  
  
Hushed silence falls, people watch her with eager faces. She is known for her quiet, for her thin smiles and tendency to disappear.  
  
Uncle Sehstor’s eyes widen in growing horror as she stands and lifts her glass.  
  
“I would like to thank my father, for passing on the, as Sehstor would put it ‘damn stubborn head’ that lead me here.”  She pauses for the polite laughter that follows, smiling. “My father is,” another pause, letting the present tense sink in, “the finest man I’ll ever know. And I hope every day that his stubborn head keeps him well, as our empires finest Hero stands alone in the place we would not even send our vilest criminals.”  
  
She sits, smiles at the shocked faces, and goes back to her dinner.  
  
She isn’t invited to any banquets or festivals or grand, honoring celebrations again.  
  
—————————————-  
  
She will always remember exactly where she was when she hears it.  
  
It was her own room; the news is only on as background noise as she looks over her notes and prepares for bed.  
  
“--confirmation that a distress signal has indeed been received from the Fearling Confinement.”  
  
The world tilts.  
  
Everything turns to static.  Papers scatter over the floor from her limp fingers.  
  
The harried voice goes on, rushed as they read from whatever prompter is being held up. “We can not confirm anything by this point, but we are receiving reports that General Sehstor Bunnymund is responding to the signal.”  
  
Her chest is clenched and tight, she can barely suck in a breath as her vision blurs.  
  
She is full grown, a woman with her own calling and life.  
  
“ _Daddy.._.”

Her voice is the whisper of a terrified little girl.


	2. Chapter 2

It’s a few days after the distress signal that the nightmares start. It was her own fault really, she hadn’t been able to sleep the entire time, staying up hanging on the news waiting.

For a word, for a sign, for SOMETHING. Something to tell her what is happening to the only two people she’s ever given a real damn about.

At first, she had felt a sick hope. Sehstor would get her dad out of there, they would see that Kozmotis Pitchiner couldn’t be left alone there.

He’d come home.

Just that idea is enough to keep her up. The last time she had seen her father she was barely grown. A young girl on the edge of being a woman, full of glaring anger and wanting to throw everything at the people who were taking her father away.

She did throw everything in her room, after she couldn’t even see the ship on her telescope anymore. But she was changed now, he would be changed.

What if he was a completely different person?

But she could only stay up for so long. Could only pace the room and feel herself fraying at the edges for so long before sleep finally yanked her down into it’s darkness.

She feels small again.

A little girl sitting in her bed, shaking and terrified and she can’t say why can’t say why there are tears streaking down her face as she hiccups into her knees.

A large hand smooths her hair back, gentle and calm and the feeling of the side of the bed dipping nearly breaks her.

“What’s the matter, princess? What’s gotten my little spitfire so upset?”

“You’re not you anymore.” She sniffles.

The hand pauses, it feels like ice on her head and sends crawling shivers down her skin.

“What are we?”

She looks up at that, the voice is off somehow. It’s like the air is being forcibly dragged out and scraped through his throat. Her head lifts, even as her mind screams at her not to look, she doesn’t want to look, doesn’t want to see-

He’s a corpse.

Seraphina can’t even scream,

can’t make a sound as she gapes at her father. 

His skin dark and dirty, like he’s been dragged through ash. 

 

His face is slack, and as she stares at him his head slowly tilts, like it’s forgotten how to hold itself back up.

His eyes are black pits, gouged out of his head.

His mouth stretches into a smile, a grimace of teeth that pulls at his face. There’s a gurgling sound, a low hiss as something black and inky dribbles from the corners of his mouth. It burbles up, drips down over his bed and spreads wherever it touches until everything is black. 

The thing pretending to be her father lurches towards her, smiling still while the hand grips her hair.

“What’s w r o n g pr in ce ss?”

She screams then.

The scream tears out from her lungs, shreds her throat and melds with the shrieking laughs from millions of gaping mouths around her. Kozmotis lurches, laughs with them and each spasm brings a new burst of black tar pouring from his mouth.

It burbles over his teeth, plopping onto the bed and he laughs and grips her hard enough to tear at her skull.  
Seraphina can feel the hot, slick oil crawling over her skin. It pushes at her pores and her screams only make it sink deeper into her. Kozmotis smiles through the pitch in his mouth then spasms. For a second he chokes on the blackness, coughing and sobbing against the thick black gore and when he look at her she sees a glimpse of gold within the black of his eyes.

"I'm so sorry princess..."

 

She’s still screaming when she wakes up. Even though she can feel the cool air on her skin and see the light again, even though she knows it was only a dream. She can’t stop screaming.

\--------------

The next morning sees the palace in a panic. Seraphina wasn’t the only one terrorized during the night.

She tries not to think what it means, the nightmares returning.

Everything is chaos, people are running around, fretting and worrying and talking about the possibility of evacuation. It’s quieter in her room, where she can shut the windows and doors and keep the news running constantly. It’s not much of a help, mainly filled with more professional looking people worrying and fretting and talking about evacuation. 

And then

“We’ve picked up a signal from The Luminoss. General Sehstor Bunnymund has now made contact on the Prison world, we are now streaming live.”

She doesn’t remember what she was doing, doesn’t remember what it is that she drops to the ground as she runs over to the viewer.

There isn’t much to see at first, there are shadows and dust kicked up from the ship landing and the shapes of the crew moving into position. And then she sees the silhouette approaching.

Even after all these centuries, she recognizes the tall, proud figure of Kozmotis Pitchiner.

It’s hard to make him out, even though her eyes are watering from watching so intently. He’s obscured by the roiling dark.

He stumbles and her hands clench where they grip the viewer’s screen. Daddy may be hurt but he’s walking out, he’s walking out and now she can see Sehstor stepping to the front of his men. He says something that she can’t quite make out and her father stops a little ways away.

Something’s wrong.

He stands oddly, legs buckling a little as if he’s having trouble figuring out how to place them. His arms hang loose at his sides and he looks like he’s barely being held together by a string. It’s like seeing a marionette waiting to be given instruction, hanging loose and waiting to be picked up and controlled. 

“Come on daddy come on...please just keep walking please-”

She can hear Sehstor say something again, it’s muffled and distant but for some reason her father’s answer comes through as clear as if he was standing in front of her.

His voice hisses out, dragged through his throat and clawing through the air.

“We do not know a Koz.”

Her legs give out, she wants to scream but can only whimper softly as she falls to her knees, not looking away from the screen. “No no daddy no please-”

Kozmotis moves, twisting his hand and her heart twists with it as the shadows pool around him to form a long pole with a blade at the end.

He had always favored the war scythes. Liked their elegance mixed with just enough brutality, he would say. And she had loved watching him move his hand and form a brilliant scythe from the light around him.  
Her father’s eyes gleam a sick yellow from the shadows of his face, she realizes that he isn’t shrouded in shadow.

He is shadow.

“No no no Stars no daddy-”

Sehstor moves his hand, yells something and she screams when the first volley of plasma bursts shoots towards her father. Seraphina wants to stop it, wants to leap in and make everyone stop but she can only weep to herself while the screen fills with the bright bursts of light.

Outside, somewhere else in the palace, she can hear a distant screaming and crying. But it doesn’t matter. Nothing matters.

Her father stumbles out from the smoke, stumbles through the constant barrage of fire and grips the scythe in his hand.  
She tries to scream as he moves before Sehstor, tries to cry out and yell to make it STOP.

“No please no no Sehstor run!”

“We are the pitch black between the stars”

The scream still won’t come as the spray of blood fills the viewer. Other screams echo through the palace but hers dies in her throat, catching against her larynx as Sehstor falls into two pieces and her father (not him, not anymore, it’s not HIM) slices into the ranks of men.

She’s silent, quiet and shaking even long after the viewer shuts off and the panic spreads through the empire.

\--------------------------

Her voice comes back, in the main gallery.

The Tsar and Tsarina are already preparing to board their evacuation ship. The other courtiers have already been rushed away to find their vessels, leaving the royal family to take their child and his personal guard.

The anger bursts free, it fills her and drives her forward. It pushes her through the halls and makes her entire being into one agonized scream that moves her legs and crackles through her fingers.

'There's a storm in your eyes.'

 

There are technically guards at the doors, but she has learned her craft well and the pretty and decorative flowers grow to her rage and hold them tight as she explode through the doors.

“YOU DID THIS!”

The Tsarina looks up first, face streaked with tears and eyes wide with a harried panic as the guards move between them.

“Seraphina!”

“This is your fault!” She screams at them. Arms grab her, hold her fast and bind her even as she shrieks and twists and yanks against them. They hold her hands behind her back and keep her down as her feet slide against the slick golden tile. She screams through the tears that she didn’t realize started falling again. Screams while they stare at her in numb horror.

“You sent him there! You sent both of them!” She yells, voice breaking on a sob.

There had been so much blood so many shadows and she remembers the last true words she heard from her father.

‘I’m so sorry princess....’

“Seraphina please!” The Tsar begs, “He was our friend as well! We didn’t-”

“Friend?! Your friend!? You sent him there to die! You destroyed him! Look at what you did to your dear friend! To my FATHER!”

“Seraphina, please!”

“This is your fault!” She screams. 

Sehstor is gone, her father is worse than dead. Every memory of him comes flooding back, every part of him that she tried not to think about when he was still trapped as the guard of a doomed world.

The way he would laugh as she dragged him to look at something new.

His grin taking up his whole face as he walked down the ramp from his latest mission, arms open and ready to toss her into the air after she ran as fast as she could to him. There was a special note that their laughter took when it collided in the air as he swept her up.

How he’d just smile and indulge her, letting her weave flowers into his dark hair as he talked to important people who she could never be bothered with.

His hands. Large and slender and bony as they brushed her hair away from her face, danced through the air as he told stories, or curled around her own tiny fingers.

Gripping her hair  
nearly ripping it from her skull in her sleep.

His smile  
dripping with black.

His hands  
gripping the black war scythe. Stained with red and clumps of tawny fur.  
Everything is gone, everything stained with black and red. There’s nothing left in her but the rage and the screaming. It fills her to the brim, fills the hall with her loss and only dies down when the sleep spell hits her like a wall.

When she wakes up she will be on a ship with the royal family, surrounded by plants and greenery as the official caretaker for the ships biotope.

The scream will be gone, the rage finally free from her.

It leaves nothing in it’s wake.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HAPPY FATHER'S DAY!!!


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Desperately clings to all headcanons and pointedly writes the name "Seraphina"*
> 
> Yeah, I'm not letting this go. In light of the fourth book I'm keeping most of my Seraphina headcanons (including the name) and adding a few elements from the book into the existing canon for this universe.

The Moon Clipper is a marvel of the Golden Empire. Designed for beauty as much as function, it could host an entire city’s population within it’s sphere and the great sails caught even the faintest starlight, keeping it adrift even in the darkest corners of the universe as well as powering it. If attacked, the golden sails could dissipate and the outer shell would harden into a shell as thick as the skin of a planet. It was originally made as a way for the grand Imperial Court to travel within their empire, protected and luxurious as they temporarily orbited whatever planet they were visiting. Shining down as a temporary moon, reminding the inhabitants that their benevolent rulers were there in person to watch over them.

It now holds the entirety of the Empire. A scraggling bunch of wanderers; the thinkers and artists and grand court members hoarded up and on the run for countless centuries as the darkness grows behind them.

Near the base of the sphere there is a hollow, filled with a world’s worth of plants and running water, the biodome that sustains the life of the entire ship.

This is Seraphina’s world now.

She once came out of the biodome, once separated herself from the link that kept her mind slow and green and peaceful. She once roamed the ship aimlessly, not looking anyone in the eye as they gathered new refugees who whispered of a great ship swarming with shadows and eyes, of a man at the front with eyes that burned with the light of screaming stars and a smile that was a gash across his face.

It has been a long, long time, and many have forgotten his name. Those who remember it don’t speak it anymore. His name is a stone hanging from their necks, screaming through their minds when they dream of laughter chasing after them and of clawed fingers picking at their trail, hunting them down.

The last time Seraphina left her refuge, the Pookah were gone. She ran into the Grand Timekeeper, the eldest of them tasked with guarding time itself and the light of the universe.

He was young. So painfully young. A scrap of a little gray and silvery blue kit with the marks of the Bunnymund clan and wide, terrified green eyes that stared out at the spaces between the stars as he clutched the staff of his new station in shaking paws.

She had happened to pass by him as she wandered, and his markings had made her pause. Seraphina hadn’t met many of the Pookah outside of Sehstor, but she knew enough to know what the sharp pointed flowers marked into his fur meant. The Pookah where always proud to show their lineage.

“I knew a Bunnymund.” She said softly. It was nothing, in the face of the kitlings loss, but she could pretend it was a help. He jumps at the sound of her voice and glances up.

She hadn't expected his eyes to widen further and for his claws to dig into the staff as he stared ather. His fur bristled when she lowered herself down to one knee to look at him better.

“It’s all right, young Timekeeper. We are safe from the nightmares here.” A lie. But it’s repeated so often that she says it without thinking. It’s a mantra in this ship, a prayer murmured again and again until it’s carved into their being.

“M’sorry.” He muttered, still staring at her wide eyed as he retracted his claws with obvious discomfort. “S’just...you look like him.”

                          _You look so like your father, dear._

 

                                                  _‘Daddy, do I look at lot like Mommy?’_

_‘I’m afraid you take more after me. Sorry about the nose, Princess.’_

_‘Why? It works fine!’_

_‘Of course dear. Just remember that when you’re a teenager.’_

 

 

She doesn’t leave the biodome after that.

It’s much easier when she lies back and links with the plants, when her thoughts sink into the roots and move with the slow unfurling of a leaf and the leisurely crawl of vines towards the light. There are still dreams; visions of a smile and light through the windows and the way it would catch on russet fur or coarse black hair.

There are a few visitors. Her favorite being a quiet, worn comet man who joined them some few decades ago. Sanderson’s soft smile and silent conversation are a rare peace, and after a while he’s the only one who still comes. Even when they find a refuge, a new planet, and she sinks so far into her terraforming that she doesn’t know where her body is or where it ends and where the deep canyons and crashing waves and whirling wind of the forming world begins, Sanderson visits.

He visits, but she takes no notice. Forming a planet is not the same as linking her mind with the slow, old plants of the biodome. Everything is young and rushing and wild. There’s bursts of lava forming the new land, crashing waves to redirect and sculpt, the air to seed so the rain will fall with the bare molecular components and slowly build into something that could be life. The Moon Clipper sits in a time stasis, days and simple years going by while millennia after millennia passes on the world she works on.

It’s their new hope, a remote and distant glint of a planet that forms slow but sure as the ship drifts overhead with it’s golden sails. But to her it’s essence. She is no longer the daughter of a nightmare, no longer a familiar face to startle survivors and cause whispers while the Lunanoffs hide away in the central core of the vessel.

Life blooms and dies, forms and reforms in a series of tests as she carefully guides the planet. Her body stays on it’s cot in the biodome, slowly sinking into a shell hooked up to machines while her mind and soul is caught in the blast of the wind and the steady crumbling of cliffs into the sea. There’s an awareness of what’s going on around her body, but only faint. Snippets of sound and sensation come to her filtered through the slow growth of the plants around her.

She’s only stalling now. The planet is ready, has been ready for a long time now, and she knows that the next step is to unhook herself and join the refugees, guiding them to populate this new world she has made for them and begin a new Golden Empire. A place to rest and regroup and recover as they worked on how to contain The Dark. But she can’t bring herself to pull away, to put herself back into that single shell after her veins have been rivers and her breath has been a tornado.

It’s amusing, really. She herself had warned about the possibility of being lost when hooked into her TerraLink. There were many papers on the subject of how to prevent a terraformer from drifting too much into a project, of the pitfalls and how to avoid them, how to keep them tethered to their own self.

She knew the signs and she moved on regardless, she allowed the depths of the oceans and the grinding of continents to absorb her. It’s easier, in the end, to be a planet.

There are mountains being sculpted, when she’s first distantly aware of her body moving. It takes a little bit, to separate the crush of stone and the heaving of the earth from the tremors that run through her muscle and bones. Then she can actually hear the echos of the rumbles and pauses in her work, straining to focus on what’s happening to her distant body. It’s difficult, like swimming through tar to find where she is. She hadn’t realized how far she’d let herself go into the planet.

“Ni-...................it-.........At-a ckk-!”

There are snippets of sound, tinny through the speakers in the biodome and she pulls away to look up from the planet instead.

The great golden sails of the Moon Clipper are furling in, flickering as their light dies and the ship goes gray as it turns into an actual moon. There’s an explosion of light when they fully vanish.

Something isn’t right.

Seraphina strains harder now to pull back into herself. How long had it been? Years? Decades? Centuries? She has no idea how much time has passed on the ship while she arranged a world. And now, for the first time, she feels how dangerously thin the thread connecting her to her own body is. It strains as she pulls herself back, trembles and twangs and she goes slow to keep it from snapping entirely.

How long has it been? What was happening?

-Ser-...........ch i ld- co- back-!-

Sandersons not-words and the feel of the comet riders light is stronger than the tinny and frantic voice over the speakers. The gold helps her, slides down the thread to her and helps pull her back in.

Her own body is a shock.

Seraphina gasps as she comes back to herself, sucks the thin air into her small and insignificant lungs, twitches her confining muscles and blinks up at the green canopy of trees above her.

Sanderson’s small hands on hers are warm, and when she looks down she has to stare for a few moments to realize that the skeletal and pale hand between the bright gold is her own.

“EVERYONE RETREAT TO THE INNER SPHERES. STAY AWAY FROM THE SHADOWS. I REPEAT. DO NOT APPROACH THE SHADOWS. IF YOU SEE ANYONE GO INTO A SHADOW DO NOT GO AFTER THEM.”

The alarms scream through the biodome and the rumbles drift through as the delicate shaking and fall of leaves.

“Sanderson, what-?”

His stare is pained and his face drawn as he pulls on her hand.  
-We are under attack. It found us.-

It.

She sits up, slow and painful and shaking. Her body is a frail and desiccated husk that has forgotten how to move but panic keeps her heart pounding even when she can feel her mind trying to fall back into the mountains and storms.

“It’s him, isn’t it?” She asks, voice rasping and a forced calm. Sanderson blinks, then nods.

-I need to go. I may be able to fight him off but he’s already infected half the ship. You need to get to the central sphere until I come back.-

“Take me with you.” Standing is the hardest thing she’s done, the wires and electronics fall from her easily but she can still feel the pull of the planet on her heart. How long had she been connected?

-Sera you don’t want-

“Don’t tell me what I want!” She snaps, stumbling to her feet and clinging to his hand as he hovers up alongside her. “Take me with you! I need to see him.”

He doesn’t try to deny her again. Sanderson’s hand keeps her steady and his light keeps the shadows oozing over the halls back as they stumble to his small, bright ship.

She isn’t connected but the journey into the ship and takeoff are a blur. The wind tugs at her, the rain wants to draw her back to the planet below. She feels like she’s holding herself in this body, like if she doesn’t focus she’ll slip out and fall back to the world below.

The sight of the menacing black ship yanks her back though. If she squints she can see the basic outline of what had once been an Imperial vessel, now shifting and morphing constantly with the moving shadows over it and sharp with harpoons and spines of nothing but shadow. The star sails have lost their glow, instead rising over the sides of the ship like the wings of a monstrous insect.

Seraphina doesn’t need to look to see the man standing behind the harpoon, impervious to the vacuum of space around him.

She hasn’t seen her father since the video feed of him slaughtering an entire ship. In that he had been a walking shadow, stumbling like a badly controlled puppet as he clumsily ripped his way through soldier after soldier.

He’s solid now. She can no longer tell herself that there’s nothing of her Father left when she can see the outline of his features, the glint of his eyes and the clear smile over his mouth that curls in a mockery of his kind face.

Kozmotis (they call him The Pitch Black now, but she can’t bring herself to) is still in the tattered remains of his uniform. His skin is stained dark and his eyes blaze but the garb of a General is still sharp on him, even though the collar is torn and frayed and the sleeves nearly fall off of his arms.

“Sandy-”

Sanderson grips the controls of his ship, readying every weapon he has. -That isn’t your father, Sera.-

“It didn’t look that much like him last time, maybe-”

Kozmotis’ head jerks over, the shadows around his feet writhe as he spots the small golden ship flying at him. His grin is full of teeth and his laugh carries impossibly to them.

There’s nothing of her father in that laugh, but the face is so like him, the long legged and confident stride is too familiar.

“Kozmotis!” She yells. It’s stupid, but if they can hear his laughter against all logic, maybe he could hear them. Maybe something would recognize her.

He laughs, a harpoon forming in his hands as he walks out onto one of the sharp points of his ship.

-Seraphina, he can’t-

“Father! Come on!” He still moves like Kozmotis, still laughs and walks and holds his weapon like Kozmotis. “I know you’re in there! Please remember! You promised me you’d never forget! You promised you’d always come home!”

He stands at the tip and smiles when the shadows launch themselves at Sanderson’s ship. The planet below pulls at her still as the small starship bobs and weaves, shaking violently when a harpoon embeds itself into the side. But he moves like Kozmotis and Kozmotis had promised her.

“You promised me! Daddy please!”

He stops, eyes yanking away from the harpoons flying at them and over the distance and void, they meet hers.

The hatred in his eyes punches through and incinerates her from the inside.

Seraphina feels the rage building in her in response. A hate that burns hotter than his and flares like a wildfire.

“You promised me! You promised you wouldn’t forget!” She screams, shaking harder than the ship as harpoon after harpoon slams into it. “You promised!”

The ship tilts violently, the world pulls on her stronger than any force of gravity. Her rage is a wave crashing on the shore and the roar of the volcanoes. She screams as the rage rips her under like an undertow, yanking her deep and strong. Her grip on the frail body slips, falters, doesn’t stand a chance against the rage and hate that she feels in his gaze that stares through her without recognition.

The body falls away from her like a used up skin, which is all it’s become at this point. The world, her world, her creation and her new true body pulls her back.

She’s the wind and the roaring it makes when she continues screaming. She’s the crashing thunder and the lighting that rips the sky. She has her father’s temper and the world shakes as it rises to her rage.

But a flash of light catches her gaze, a brilliant flare of gold.

Sandy’s ship falls.

Her old body is a useless pile on there, but now she can help, she can do more than shake and cling. For the third time in her life she sees a good man falling under the darkness.

But this time she can do something about it.

The ship is designed to handle the atmosphere, but after that it’s in her domain. She calls on the wind, blowing harder than it ever would on it’s own and cushioning the ship’s fall as it guides it down. It’s like cradling it in her hands, feeling it fall through the air and helping it.

When it crashes into her largest ocean the currents bring it back up, they swirl and keep the sands of the golden ship from sinking and scattering as it begins to fall apart. The waves keep it aloft and the volcanoes deep below erupt and build until there’s a tiny spec of land for the golden sands to settle on.

She can’t do much else, but he’s alive. Alive and safe for now on her world, where she can keep him alive, where she can finally keep someone safe.

The night sky above is filled with flashes of battle and the bursts of light from an exploding ship. She watches as the great horrific ship begins to burn up in her atmosphere and she silently guides it down, fighting the urge to rip it apart with the wind.

The Nightmare Galleon crashes through the earth into a deep cavern, and she fights the urge to sink into the stones to see if there are any survivors.

It didn’t matter if he had walked and smiles and laughed like a twisted version of her father. Kozmotis Pitchiner was dead and long gone.

And Seraphina had finally shed the body connecting her to his fate, had burst free of the empire and everything it wanted from her.

She pulls away from the smouldering wreck deep in the cavern and spreads her awareness over her world.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Annd here's the actual final chapter for Storm in Your eyes! If you're into Things That Were, I definitely recommend reading this chapter at least, since it does explain some things in TTW such as what's up with the fearlings and why Seraphina hasn't shown up much!

She hates him.  
  
She hates Pitch Black with every fiber of herself, the last shreds that are left that she can call fully her own, separate from the rest of the world.   
  
She watches a shred of shadow develop, watches him settle into a place within this world they have all created then stranded themselves on. Watches as he molds himself into the psyche of the young sentient race without realizing what he is or what he’s doing.   
  
She hates his laugh, anywhere from a soft, silken chuckle to a burst of sound that takes his whole body to make.  
  
She hates his walk, the confident and sure strides that don’t hold the stumble of a mindless puppet. She hates how they are crisp and purposeful, a military walk.  
  
She hates how low and smooth his voice is, how free of dripping hisses and snarling crunching fear it is. She hates how it’s controlled and clear, how it can sing a passing song he happened to like or how it can cheerfully mock whatever catches his eye.  
  
She hates how every move, every gesture, every whisper that comes from him is an echo of Kozmotis. Her father shines through in everything Pitch does, in every tilt of his head and every sharp smile of victory or snarl of defeat.   
  
She hates how he dances.  
  
How when nothing else is around, or he’s caught up in the beauty of one of his nightmares, he’ll laugh and spin and glide over the ground, his feet quick and effortless as he dances within the spirals of his sand. She hates how the swirls around him make her think of flowing dresses and his laughter reminds her of hands holding on to hers as the world span and span and span until she was nearly sick from it.   
  
She hates that Kozmotis Pitchiner isn’t dead.  
  
It was easier, when he was dead. When he was gone and all she looked at was an empty puppet. When he was gone she could move on, she DID move on. She had created her own life and her own purpose, she made herself a new world, made herself INTO a world, and walked away from the smouldering wreckage of her father’s ruined ship with a clear head.  
  
But Kozmotis Pitchiner is alive. Twisted and deranged as he wanders the earth spreading fear and terror and feeding on nightmares.  
  
She hates how once, she tried to talk to him. How she focused herself into an exhausting manifestation, an image in the clouds to try to say something to him.  
  
She hates how he had paused, looked at her with a slight frown and tilted his head.   
  
“You’re what the humans call Mother Nature? I didn’t think you were actually one who existed. Did you only recently gain awareness?” He asked, curious. She realizes then that he thinks that’s where they all come from, that they’re from the stories of humans. He watches her calm and assessing, the curious frown still there, but not unwelcome.   
  
“You don’t remember me.” She doesn’t ask it, can see it in his confused blink and the way he politely waits for a conversation to start.  
  
He does pause though, hands tapping against each other, brows lowering and jaw shifting. “I don’t…” He fidgets more, uncomfortable as she feels her grip on her image slipping. “You look...familiar.’ He says finally, a question in his voice.  
  
Her scream rends the clouds and she has a moment to see his eyes widen in startled surprise as she goes into the storm.  
  
The lightning ravages the sky for days and he stands in the storm with the same quizzical frown and she knows that he paces for a week with the same frown.   
  
Kozmotis Pitchiner isn’t dead, but he has forgotten her.  
  
That doesn’t stop him from trying to replace her.  
  
She sees how he collects orphans, hears them scream when he infects them and shushes them gently, bringing them into a new family.  
  
She sees how he obsesses over Katherine, headstrong, sweet Katherine with her stubborn will and her long waving hair. He may not remember Seraphina, but he tries his best to replace her. She hates that he still feels that loss, that there is enough of Kozmotis in there to know, in some way, that he should be a father, but not enough to remember why or how. That there’s just enough to make the sick twisting of his loneliness into the screams of children and the hiss of shadows into a shredding mockery of who he once was.  
  
She can’t keep watching him, can’t keep seeing that as more of Kozmotis comes out, as he smiles and settles into a solid personality more, the shadows twist him further. Can’t see how he laughs his brightest with a town ablaze under his feet and how he dances with light, graceful steps to the sound of screams when a mob finally breaks and gives into it’s insane fear.  
  
The screams themselves don’t bother her, life is short in her world, life is often cruel, and terrible things happen. Life will go on even with the screams. But they were never meant to be caused by him.  
  
So she makes herself stop watching him, she dives into the planet and seeps herself into the storms. She rides the wind and pretends that she doesn’t care to notice how he calms and settles when the thunder cracks and the rain sheets around him.  
  
She stops, she turns away, and the centuries go by.  
  
It’s hard to really pin how many have gone by (though she has noted his fall, noted him crawling away into his lair and secretly hoped that he would stay there where she didn’t have to see him), when the sound of screams rip through the world. It’s not a sound most could hear, but to her they blanket everything, drown out the sound of shifting plates, the crash of waves and the roar of the volcanoes. It’s a scream that fractures and splits and shreds itself and she hasn’t heard a sound like that since she wore a body draped in fine silks in the core of a dying empire.  
  
The shadows begin to flee over her world. Fearlings, separate and small and shrivelled as they crawl over her surface. They’re pathetic confused shades but the feel of them over the surface of her world makes her insides crawl and makes the mountains shiver in disgust.  
  
For all she hates Pitch Black, she knows that everything he is stands as proof of her father’s strength, that he stands and holds all the fearlings and nightmare men in him without losing the core of himself. She knows he is their prison.  
  
But they crawl over her and shrink into the darker caverns, shrieking and writhing and small as they hide from the light and disperse over the world.  
  
It barely takes a thought for the winds to fly to Sandy’s palace, not knowing what to ask or how he would know but Sandy has to know Sandy would be the only one who could know what those are. Even the Pookah was too young to really understand the fearlings or what role Pitch Black played in their captivity.  
  
She follows the glow of golden sand to a tower high above his island, and she can’t remember the last time it was so easy to make herself into something physical, but she touches down with feet and her hair billows like the clouds forming above them.  
  
Pitch Black lies on a bed of golden sand.  
  
But it’s not Pitch Black. The skin is drawn and thin, but it’s a pale silvery gray, unblemished and untouched by shadow. The robe sits as just a robe over his bony shoulders, traces of embroidery gleaming here and there.  
  
There’s a trace of the imperial crest near the collar, a shred of what could have been a cuff on the end of one sleeve, bits and pieces of what might have been a uniform rising from the shadowy material.  
  
Sandy glances at her and then quickly goes back to looking over Pitch, forming dreamsand around him like a protective barrier. Pitch shifts, a small broken sound escaping him and a his brows furrowing together in pain.  
  
“What did you do?”  
  
Sandy’s mouth tightens, but he doesn’t stop his dreamweaving. **-We didn’t know this would happen. I didn’t know. Sera-**  
  
“What did you do!?”   
  
Kozmotis Pitchiner lies on a bed of golden sand, and she hasn’t seen him since she was a stick of a girl.   
  
**-We didn’t know he would survive.-** Sandy answers, still frowning as quick flashes of butterflies weave and dart through the dream sand.   
  
“You were going to kill him?” Her rage was always her weapon but she can’t stop the roll of thunder in her voice. “The rest of your Guardians are ignorant fools, but you know what he is, you know what I-”  
  
 **-I thought it would be better to release him from what he had turned into, than to let him go on! They saw an end to their enemy, I saw a way to free whatever was left of Kozmotis Pitchiner. -**  
  
Kozmotis shifts again, shuddering from some unseen horror. Seraphina takes a few steps towards him, hands clenching and clouds rolling around her in agitation.  
  
He had never looked so small.  
  
In all her memories, he had towered over her, huge in his armor and wearing a wide grin while his large hands swept her up into the air and held her on his shoulders. He’s barely a wraith of what he was. Pitch Black was banished and scattered over the world and Kozmotis remains as a wrung out husk.  
  
“And this is saving him? Do we even know how much of him is left in there? Or did you save my father to leave him a mindless and broken shell?”  
  
 **-He knew who he was. He was...confused, but he knew who he was.-**  
  
She stops a few feet from the sand bed, arms crossed in front of her and rain pouring heavy outside. “How many times,” she says softly, “am I going to have to mourn my father?”  
  
 **-He was looking for you.-** Sandy says, his nonvoice somehow quieter.  
  
The waves slam into the walls of the palace, roaring and foaming. She stays quiet and stares at what might be left of her father.  
  
“I can’t talk to him, not yet. Tell me….tell me what happens, how he is. But I cant-” She has to stop, frowns because there shouldn’t be this tight twist in her lungs when she technically has no lungs. “I can’t talk to him. I spent too long mourning his loss, too long hating him for what he keeps putting me through over and over again. I’ll never be done mourning him.”  
  
 **-What do you want me to tell him?-**  
  
“Nothing. Just. Please? I need this to be on my terms, for the first time in my existence, I need to be in control. I need to monitor the plague you all decided to release again anyway.”  
  
 **-You saw them, then?-** Sandy looks up at that, tensing, sand whirling around him.  
  
“They were confused. They’re hiding now. But eventually they’ll remember that they are not one being, they’ll remember how to be the swarm again.”  
  
Sandy nods, no doubt already making plans on how to deal with that problem, whenever it arises. **-Don’t ignore him entirely, Sera.-**  
  
She steps back, turns away from the broken man who won’t let her go. “No. I never could. But this time I’ll be the one in control of our fate. I am more than my father's daughter now.”  
  
The thunder calls her, the winds pull at the edges of her and unravels the form she’s made. She turns away from what might be her father, and goes into the storm.

 


End file.
